Piggie's pages

Sunday, October 19, 2014

ILNP Mutagen with sugar spun spider webs

So... when I asked what scares you, spiders were mentioned most often. And here it is! An angry spider, ready to pounce, and he's been busy because there's a bunch of his webs draped all over the place. Looong creepy sticky threads, ready to tickle you in your face. I made them using the sugar spun nail art technique, and ofcourse I have a video tutorial for you!

The base for my mani is ILNP Mutagen (H), I got this gorgeous holographic ultrachrome from my darling @creatinails as a gift! This picture was taken under water to show off the amazing range of color this polish has. The water mutes the holographic effect, but shows off the colors beautifully!

I'm still trying to grasp how to capture holos to their full extent, but I've made some progress in the last week. Lots and lots of practice. A new camera would help too!

The spider is hand painted using acrylic paint. Most of my bottles are pretty old because I inherited them from my grandma, who used them for the tiny dollhouse furniture she used to make. I opened up a cream color but it was SO old, it stank! It actually smelled like a sweaty old man's armpit. Eww....

Aaaand on that note, let's look at the spider webs from up close. I used the sugar spun technique for this, which means letting a puddle of polish dry to the point that you can pull strings from it, and that's what makes the strings for the spider web. It's really not very hard to do and you don't have to be quick, precise, or have any special tools so I'm gonna walk you through it!

First, apply your base color and let it dry thoroughly. All you need for the web is a few drops of polish and a dotting tool, tooth pick or even a pencil.

Put down a couple of drops of polish and let it sit for a loooong while. I left my puddles for about 20 - 30 minutes (so enough time for an episode of your favorite comedy show!) before they were the right consistency. When the polish gets good and goopy, swirl around in it with your dotting tool (or toothpick, or anything else) and pull the goopy polish into a string. You can then drape this string over your nails in a hexagonal pattern. Put some top coat on it, or don't if you like the texture, and you're done!